On top of the incredible naiveté of believing [Iranian Foreign Minister Javad] Zarif’s assurances that Iran will suddenly become much nicer after the deal is signed (and we have lost all leverage), notice how fully he has bought into a perspective that could only be found in Iranian propaganda: that anything bad the Iranians do from now on will be our fault because we alienated them and failed to negotiate in good faith. As if the Iranian regime has not spent the last 35 years gleefully fanning the flames of conflict across the Middle East.

This warped, blame-America-first perspective is not just an argument Kerry is citing in support of the deal with Iran. It is the actual point of the whole deal.

Instead, by any reasonable assessment the moral pressure ought to run the other way. If, like many of the moderate-liberal columnists writing on this issue, you are 1) made at least somewhat uncomfortable by the dismemberment of living human beings in utero but 2) are convinced that Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion-related services are essential to the common good, why not write a column urging Planned Parenthood to, I dunno, get out of the dismemberment business? If all these other services are such a great, crucial, and (allegedly) abortion-reducing good, why do you, center-left journalist, want them perpetually held hostage to the possibility of public outrage over the crushing of tiny bodies in the womb? If a publicly-funded institution does one set of things you really like, and another thing that makes you morally uncomfortable, why are you constantly attacking that organization’s critics and telling them that they just have to live with the combination, instead of urging the organization itself to refocus on the non-lethal, non-dismembering portions of its business?

Later:

So let’s be clear about what’s really going on here. It is not the pro-life movement that’s forced Planned Parenthood to unite actual family planning and mass feticide under one institutional umbrella. It is not the Catholic Church or the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles or the Southern Baptist Convention or the Republican Party that have bundled pap smears and pregnancy tests and HPV vaccines with the kind of grisly business being conducted on those videos. This is Planned Parenthood’s choice; it is liberalism’s choice; it is the respectable center-left of Dana Milbank and Ruth Marcus and Will Saletan that’s telling pro-life and pro-choice Americans alike that contraceptive access and fetal dismemberment are just a package deal, that if you want to fund an institution that makes contraception widely available then you just have to live with those “it’s another boy!” fetal corpses in said institution’s freezer, that’s just the price of women’s health care and contraceptive access, and who are you to complain about paying it, since after all the abortion arm of Planned Parenthood is actually pretty profitable and doesn’t need your tax dollars?

The Department of Homeland Security told a federal district court that in July there was a surge of families crossing the border illegally from Mexico. Last month a judge ruled that DHS is illegally detaining children who cross the border, and DHS is worried the crossing problem will worsen when would-be illegal immigrants learn that a child amounts to a “get of detention free” card.